A sad end to a sad story.

Remember the case of the clerk who shot the beer thief? The one who got eight years probation for his murder and evidence tampering conviction?

Yeah. Well, there’s a follow-up to that story. You see, it turns out that the jury couldn’t do that.

The Texas Legislature took away from juries the ability to sentence murder defendants to probation in 2007. Juan Romero , 24, fatally shot 22-year-old Jorge Vielma at a South Austin Shell station in 2009.

So the judge tossed the verdict, and everybody involved made a deal. Romero pled out to manslaughter instead of murder, and got the same eight year probated sentence.

I would have preferred to see a retrial, and a fight at the appellate level if Romero was convicted again. But I can’t blame Romero and his lawyers for taking the deal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 7:33 am and is filed under Clippings, Guns, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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